The new timetable has actually reduced the number of "meaningful" services from 3 to 2 when travelling north from London to Cambridge. The semi-fast from St Pancras is now overtaken by the following fast train from King's Cross before they reach Cambridge. The semi-fast is still "meaningful" going south though.
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Thameslink Services/Timetable from May 20th 2018
- Thread starter blakey1152
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The new timetable has actually reduced the number of "meaningful" services from 3 to 2 when travelling north from London to Cambridge. The semi-fast from St Pancras is now overtaken by the following fast train from King's Cross before they reach Cambridge. The semi-fast is still "meaningful" going south though.
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NorthKent1989
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I wish Blackfriars was useful to me, but as it is I work in Twickenham (2 days) and Shadwell (2 days) I work at home usually one day a week, my Twickenham commute I would get the Woolwich semi fast obviously to Waterloo East and change for a Twickenham train, usually the Reading train (it's weird how the Windsor/Reading routes are the SW equivalent of the Dartford routes) my Shadwell commute I would simply change at Woolwich Arsenal for the DLR, I relied heavily on this line for its fast way of getting me to my connections, I'm not looking at other jobs which is a shame as I do love my job despite my commute, tbh I would be happy if they reintroduced the Woolwich semi fasts even if it went as far as Gravesend only, and called at all shacks to Dartford then the usual semi fast stopping pattern from there to the major interchange stations, have Thameslink remove Northfleet, Swanscombe and Stone Crossing and replace those stops with ones at Erith, Belvedere and Dockyard, to maintain their 6tph.
bramling
Veteran Member
The idea of the semi-fast services being used for Cambridge / London journeys is something I wish the timetable would allow to be got away from. These services are particularly important for passengers using the intermediate stations, especially Letchworth and Hitchin - who have lost their non-stop peak services and are stuck with 8-car services for he foreseeable future.
It's a poor solution for Cambridge passengers in any event as it means five intermediate stations and therefore a slower journey time.
In an ideal world an additional fast service might have been more useful than a 2tph stopping service to Cambridge.
gingerheid
Established Member
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- 2 Apr 2006
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Cambridge Thameslink seems to be getting worse again - back to less than 50% of trains running (last 7 trains in a row cancelled!!!)
Well that's not a proper timetable in the traditional sense of timetable publishing and doesn't appear to mention 1st class at all. What I'm seeking is a proper "branded" TL timetable.
I think at one stage the idea was that these were going to be 12 car trains and so couldn't call at Kentish Town. "Semi-fast" may be what GTR call them but they are only a couple of minutes faster than the all stations between Radlett and London all day and in the evening peak they are no faster than the stoppers. The real reason is it means that the GTR PR people can include them in the stats for how many trains call at Harpenden...
1) Re 12 car trains not being able to call at Kentish Town, I think that the same applies for the stations that it misses out south of the river. Not sure about platform lengths at Hendon and Cricklewood though.
2) So Harpenden residents wanting to go to Hendon Cricklewood or Kentish Town, and vice versa, have to change all for the sake of a couple of minutes during the day and nothing at peak times. I thought that it took about two minutes or so to stop at a station so theoretically the semi fasts ought to be 5 or 6 minutes faster than the slows.
3) Nobody looking at Timetable 201 to plan their journey using a Luton - Rainham service would have the slightest idea that these trains served Harpenden, Radlett, Elstree or Mill Hill Broadway - there is no mention of them in the timetable. if there was insufficient room to put them in the table (and there is plenty of room) they could at least have been mentioned on a footnote. (Although after my trip to Chatham yesterday I'm wondering if the timetabling powers that be have any desire to do anything that might actually assist the passenger).
4) Extending the St Albans - St Albans via Sutton services to St Albans - Luton would help. It always worked before (although Luton - Luton was a bit fragile) so why not now? I haven't looked at the timetables but assume that there are still 2tph round the loop in each direction.
I tried this link and ended up with a lengthy Amazon advert. My first I thought was to bang my head against the wall, but then I realised that it was probably more useful than the route timetable.
That's because Bluepenguin used a link shortener (which aren't against forum rules, but aren't exactly a convenient thing for many users, especially if it is one of those irritating ones that bombards you with ads to give the referrer a small payment). It is just a link to the Thameslink timetable from Railfuture 2020 which is available here without having to click through ads and captchas and whatever else.
Kind of like:
?
I'm assuming that the existence of that one isn't a one off and GTR have printed them for the other routes too.
That's what I'm after - spot the first class indications!!
I'll take a look at the station - could be more timetables than trains
.However, they are normally all available as pdfs to download - paper's so last century!!!
Silver Cobra
Member
Just had my own 'fun' with the new Thameslink services today with a simple return trip from Arlesey to Stevenage to see Solo: A Star Wars Story at the local cinema. There were no issues with the outbound journey, with the train being on time both departing Arlesey and arriving into Stevenage. The return journey, on the other hand, was completely different. The 1344 departure from Stevenage was running around 15 mintues late by the time it arrived. Around 2 minutes after leaving Stevenage, the driver says over the tannoy:
"I know you all probably don't want to hear this, but I've just been informed that this train will now be stopping next at Huntingdon. It will no longer be stopping at Hitchin, Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy or St Neots. I'm really sorry about this. Any passengers for Hitchin, Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy or St Neots stations will need to catch a service from Huntingdon back to these stations. Once again, I'm very sorry about this".
So cue an unexpected trip up to Huntingdon and a lot of angry passengers. A replacement bus was brought in for passengers heading to St Neots, Sandy and Biggleswade, but anyone travelling to Arlesey and Hitchin were advised to wait on the platform for the next train. As such, I ended up having to wait for around 45-50 minutes for the next southbound service back to Arlesey (the 1441 departure was already cancelled as part of the timetable introduction, so the next service was the 1511 departure).
"I know you all probably don't want to hear this, but I've just been informed that this train will now be stopping next at Huntingdon. It will no longer be stopping at Hitchin, Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy or St Neots. I'm really sorry about this. Any passengers for Hitchin, Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy or St Neots stations will need to catch a service from Huntingdon back to these stations. Once again, I'm very sorry about this".
So cue an unexpected trip up to Huntingdon and a lot of angry passengers. A replacement bus was brought in for passengers heading to St Neots, Sandy and Biggleswade, but anyone travelling to Arlesey and Hitchin were advised to wait on the platform for the next train. As such, I ended up having to wait for around 45-50 minutes for the next southbound service back to Arlesey (the 1441 departure was already cancelled as part of the timetable introduction, so the next service was the 1511 departure).
I presume the principal reason for all the stops on the services extended into new territory, such as the Rainham service, is that it is a covert Orcats Raid to get Thameslink a slice of the intermediate revenue developed over many years from all the stations along the way. After all, if you don't stop at the station, you can't share the revenue.
I'm actually surprised nobody yet has pulled the Passcom approaching "their" station which is suddenly cancelled like this. And once that gets onto Twitter it will spread like wildfire.
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Dr Hoo
Established Member
So you think that the DfT, which gets the revenue from GTR, is deliberately raiding the revenue of the Southeastern franchise?
Well as they are now actually collecting a share of such revenue that used to be wholly South Eastern, can you offer an alternative view?
BluePenguin
On Moderation
I thought I would go the neat and tidy look. Here is a direct link:
https://www.railplan2020.com/-/medi...m-great-northern-mondays-to-fridays.pdf?la=en
BluePenguin
On Moderation
Yes exactly! Here is the direct link to the timetable I was talking about: https://www.railplan2020.com/-/medi...m-great-northern-mondays-to-fridays.pdf?la=en
bramling
Veteran Member
That’s disgraceful. Bad enough that the service was late and amended, but utterly contemptuous not to give people the opportunity to alight first. Surprised the driver didn’t refuse, unless of course there was some kind of infrastructure issue which sounds unlikely from your description.
Welcome to Thameslink, this sort of thing is exactly the reason many of us didn’t want it coming to GN. Short local journeys will suffer most, particularly where there is a 2tph frequency, as opposed to somewhere like St Albans with its luxurious service.
ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Interesting that the generally savvy SAC commuters have not yet worked out they have a few services to Littlehampton , East Grinstead and (when it runs) ..Rainham.
To my knowledge no explanation of new service linkages , which is pretty poor show really. A one seat journey - to use the American term - to say Greenwich needs to be sold , and I can see no promotion of "we are back in business at London Bridge"....a much bigger market)
Back a few years ago , when some SE links were brought in - regular passengers to London were hugely put off by destinations south of the Thames such as Kent House , Bromley South etc in the peaks. The soon worked it out.
To my knowledge no explanation of new service linkages , which is pretty poor show really. A one seat journey - to use the American term - to say Greenwich needs to be sold , and I can see no promotion of "we are back in business at London Bridge"....a much bigger market)
Back a few years ago , when some SE links were brought in - regular passengers to London were hugely put off by destinations south of the Thames such as Kent House , Bromley South etc in the peaks. The soon worked it out.
Silver Cobra
Member
I don't think it was an infrastructure issue. More likely it was to try to bring the service as close to being back on time by the time it reached Peterborough as possible (it went from 15 down at Stevenage to 6 down at Huntingdon), as the following service did call at all stations between Stevenage and Huntingdon. Looking at RTT, several late-running Peterborough services in the last few hours have either skipped various stops between Finsbury Park and Peterborough or been cancelled, and the same with some Cambridge services, including one that only stopped at Foxton after Finsbury Park.
You can always make use of formatting to make things appear neatly, for example clicking on >>this<< will take you to that same webpage, and it isn't particularly difficult to do either (simply highlight the word you wish to turn into a hyperlink, and then click the chain icon and paste the actual link into the popup that appears)
That isn't a Thameslink (the route) issue, so much as a GTR issue. I'm sure that GTR will happily give skip-stop orders to Great Northern and Southern services as well as Thameslink services to recover delays.
Six Thameslink trains booked to East Grinstead in the evening peak.
Two have run (1641 and 1841 from London Bridge)
Two replaced by Southern services from the low level platforms (1711 and 1741)
The other three uncovered (1811 and 1911)
Where is the stock spare from?
Two have run (1641 and 1841 from London Bridge)
Two replaced by Southern services from the low level platforms (1711 and 1741)
The other three uncovered (1811 and 1911)
Where is the stock spare from?
urpert
Member
According to the live PPM the Kent side was the worst hit today. Fortunately I had the car.
bramling
Veteran Member
This simply isn’t going to work if the slightest delay arriving onto GN leads to stops being removed. There may well be a need to extend the turnaround time at Peterborough by putting an extra unit into the mix, although I’m not really familiar with the layout at Peterborough to say how well the infrastructure could handle this. Naturally there would also need to be slack in the driver duties.
It’s simply not acceptable to have such busy stations missed with only a 2tph service.
All highly predictable of course, so shouldn’t be coming as a surprise to anyone. The old Thameslink was bad enough but at least most services were 4tph, with many destinations seeing more. This isn’t the case with GN.
Silver Cobra
Member
While it technically is classified as a Thameslink service, as mentioned in my previous post, they did just that with a Kings Cross to Cambridge stopping service, skipping all stops between Finsbury Park and Foxton: http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W64626/2018/05/24/advanced
Ah thanks.so it’s the one which has been around for several weeks , which has become “These are the times the trains will run one day” or rather “if a train is actually going to run, it will tun at one of these times” timetable as far as the Luton to Rainham service is concerned.
bramling
Veteran Member
Yes but there’s a lot more chance of a train being delayed under Thameslink and coming all the way from somewhere like Brighton or Horsham. Under GN many Peterborough services had turnarounds of about 20 minutes at King’s Cross which would absorb incoming delays. This week is already showing this up, and thus far there haven’t even been any major infrastructure failures.
Thameslink is already becoming a swear word in Hertfordshire, as predicted. This week has been a total shambles, and those decision makers responsible for proceeding with the botched implementation should be ashamed of themselves, and with the level of competence displayed they really should be considering alternative careers.
Silver Cobra
Member
One thing I'll give Thameslink credit for is that they did reinstate a cancelled service as a result of these delays. The 1524 Peterborough-Horsham service (1541 from Huntingdon) was originally displaying as cancelled at Huntingdon while I was waiting there for my southbound service back to Arlesey. About 5-10 minutes before heading south, I saw an empty 12-car 700 pass through the station towards Peterborough. By the time I got to Arlesey, that service (1604 from Arlesey) was now listed as 'On Time' rather than cancelled.
Failed Unit
Established Member
Is this classed as cancelled for PPM reporting? As they may well have cancelled it throughout.
Bishopstone
Established Member
After a better AM peak, the Live Departure Board for City Thameslink (for example) now looks truly grim.
If they can’t sort it next week, I reckon we’re into the realms of a reduced Emergency Timetable to take us through the summer.
If they can’t sort it next week, I reckon we’re into the realms of a reduced Emergency Timetable to take us through the summer.
blakey1152
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- 5 Sep 2011
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I noticed also that for the past few days there have been trains running from Rainham to Bedford - Whether these are actually timetabled to run past Luton I have no idea but considering that Thameslink advertise the service as Rainham to Luton I guess its to make a connecting service that should start from Bedford.
So confusing!!!
So confusing!!!
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